Clothes Swapping for MDGs 7 and 8

or

How to make development educational events 'sexy' to Young Modern Performers

Background

We were looking for an idea of how to promote MDG 7 (Environmental sustainability) and MDG 8 (Global partnership) in a way that YMPs find attractive and could apply in their lifestyle. Fashion is very important to YMPs. Probably every one of us has some pieces of clothing in our wardrobe that we don't actually wear. Some of these pieces have never been worn at all. Therefore we decided to organize a clothes swapping party. We wanted to show that buying new clothes is not the only option of how to expand someone’s clothes collection. The best part is that participants can get new stuff for free (which always counts). In our message, we decided to focus on the fact that most of the clothes today are produced with low social and environmental standards. We usually have no idea what sort of journey the clothes make before arriving at the store. Swapping parties as such have been around for some years now. But mostly they are private and organized among friends. So the swapping has not reached many other groups in society yet. We decided to organize a public and more glamourous swapping party that would also attract new target groups such as YMPs – a swapping event for stylish and high quality fashion in combination with a fashion show, music, and poetry slam. YMPs like 'glittering' events. For us it was important to create that effect with this event.

With this recipe we would like to share our experiences with an upscale ambience event especially for YMPs – an event that is different from other events that NGOs normally host and thus attracts people that normally do not come to NGO events.

This recipe may also give you some inspiration for your own events for new target groups such as Young Modern Performers.